Rails & Ales names Best of Fest brews

Each year at the Rails & Ales craft beer festival, it’s always fun to see what experienced beer judges will pick as the Best of the Fest beer. Held in Huntington, West Virginia, Rails & Ales is the state’s largest pure craft beer festival, one that normally sets the standard for beer variety and quality.

Each year, West Virginia brewers participating in the festival select one of their beers to enter into the Ollie Bailey Best of the Fest competition. Then, a group of nationally certified beer judges, led by Jane Zalewski of the Greater Huntington Homebrewers Association, carefully rate the beers and select their favorite, which is named Best of the Fest.

Bad Shepherd beer honored Best of Fest

This year, I heard from the judges that it was a tough decision choosing which beer should receive the top award, but they found a way to reach consensus. At the end of the judging, Electric Petting Zoo Hazy IPA by Bad Shepherd Beer Company in Charleston placed first among its peers on this hot August 12 afternoon.

From the big grin on his face, you could tell Bad Shepherd’s head brewer Ross Williams was tickled to death. He said this batch of Electric Petting Zoo really turned out great. Electric Petting Zoo is a beer the brewery has been making for several years, but has continued to tweak in an attempt to achieve perfection.

“As this beer has evolved,” Ross said, “the bitterness level has gone down. We’ve lowered the IBU’s, while increasing our dry hop ratios. We’re trying to find a middle ground between regular beer we like to drink and super thick hazy beer.”

For the grain bill, he says it’s pretty straightforward, just pale malt with maybe little more malted wheat in it than he used to use.

“It’s mashed at the high end of the recommended temperature range,” Ross adds. “This seems to give us a nicer mouthfeel and a nicer finish.”

The dry hopping is all Citra and Idaho 7, at a 50-50 ratio. He uses a very low amount of early addition bittering hops.

Lead judge Zalewski said Electric Petting Zoo won Best of the Fest this year “because of the great balance between the bright citrus hop aroma and flavor and the mild bitterness. It’s a pleasant beer to drink with a clean finish.”

High Ground’s Delbert takes Runner-Up

Finishing a strong second to the winner was Delbert Czech Pilsner from High Ground Brewing in Terra Alta, WV. Judges picked the beer as Runner-Up.

High Ground Brewing’s owner, Dallas Wolfe, said he affectionately named this beer as an honor to his late uncle Delbert. He describes it as a traditional Czech Pilsner style beer that High Ground has brewed for several years. And, like the Bad Shepherd IPA above, the brewery tweaked this beer along the way.

Dallas said after they had brewed the beer a couple of times, they switched to using a high quality Czech lager yeast from Imperial Yeast. This move really got it dialed in. Dallas called the yeast the finishing touch on this classic style beer. He noted that the hopping is also very traditional — all Saaz hops.

“It took us several years to refine it to get it where it is today,” he said. “We’re really proud of it.”

Lead judge Zalewski had this to say about the beer: “This is a very pretty looking beer with a huge thick head. It’s easy drinking like a German Pilsner with a pleasant bitter finish.”

Bridge Brew Works gets Honorable Mention

The judges told me there was a third beer that really stood out, just not quite to the extent of the top two. They felt it deserved recognition, so they named it Honorable Mention. The beer: Pillow Rock Pilsner by Bridge Brew Works in Fayetteville.

Pillow Rock is a bad ass, easy drinker that has become ever so popular in the summertime beer garden at Bridge Brew Works. Zalewski said the judges found Pillow Rock to be “a nice, clean and crisp Pilsner” that finished just behind the top two beers. She said, “It just didn’t hit the mark in its category quite as well as the two winners did.”

Brilliant Stream sends its congratulations to all three beers and their brewers. We enjoyed every one.

Festival back in top form

Overall, this year’s Rails & Ales festival was back to top form. After suffering through a few recent years of COVID concern and festival site construction work, which limited the festival’s space and attendance, Rails & Ales seemed to have returned to attracting the kind of large, contented, beer-fan crowd that it loves.

A day of beautiful weather didn’t hurt either. Somehow, the earlier predicted storms thankfully stayed away.

I think I heard that 150 or so different beers were being poured, though I was sorry to get to sample only a mere fraction of them.

Festival attendees were pleasant and well-behaved; beer lines moved quickly; and porta-potties were plentiful. It seemed a sufficient number of volunteers were present to make everything go smoothly. Plenty of food trailers and merch booths were on hand to satisfy your hunger and shopping desires.

While a few of us may have missed seeing a larger number of high-end European brews, the crowd of roughly 3,000 attendees didn’t seem to mind at all. I think about everyone I saw was having a wonderful time.

Another thing I noticed was that this festival’s attendees seemed younger overall than the more mature festival crowds you see at major beer fests in Charleston and Wheeling. That’s a good sign for Rails & Ales.

New faces at Rails & Ales

It was also fun seeing a couple of new faces at the festival this year — even if they are faces well-known in the state’s craft beer community. The festival welcomed two popular breweries from the northern part of the state: Screech Owl Brewing from Cuzzart, WV, and Brew Keepers from Wheeling—both brewers, I believe, making their first visits to the festival.

Screech Owl’s Roger Johnson said we can expect to see Screech Owl beers out in the Charleston market any day now, and then soon following, in the Huntington market. The brewery signed up with Mountain State Beverage early in the summer to extend its distribution footprint to the southern part of West Virginia. Lines were long all afternoon/evening at the Screech Owl tent.

Brew Keepers founder Kevin Ayers made his first appearance at Rails & Ales and attendees seemed very pleased to have him. His brewery, Brew Keepers, primarily makes very solid traditional styles and does it well. It was great to see him in my part of the state giving folks a chance to enjoy his tasty brews from the Northern Panhandle.

Brilliant Stream searching for lagers

Erin McCoy and I made our first stop of the day at two tents where we inquired about lagers for an upcoming article on university sports-related beers in West Virginia. Conveniently, the Big Timber and Country Boy tents were side by side right near the fest entrance gate. Watch for our article coming soon.

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Rails & Ales
Huntington, WV

Festival website